Chapter XIX: How To Use Your Subconscious Mind To Remove Fear

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Source page 153. Chapter XIX How To Use Your Subconscious Mind To Remove Fear One of our students told me that he was invited to speak at a banquet. He said he was panic stricken at the thought of speaking before a thousand people. He overcame his fear this way. For several night she sat down in an armchair for about five minutes and said to himself slowly quietly and positively, “I am going to master this fear. I am overcoming it now. I speak with poise and confidence. I am relaxed and at ease.” He operated a definite law of mind and overcame his fear.

The subconscious mind is amenable to suggestion and is controlled by suggestion. When you still your mind and relax, the thoughts of your conscious mind sink down into the subconscious through a process similar to osmosis, whereby fluids separated by a porous membrane intermingle. As these positive seeds, or thoughts, sink into the subconscious are, they grow after their kind and you become poised, serene and calm.

Man's Greatest Enemy Is is said that fear is man's greatest enemy. Fear is behind failure, sickness and poor human relations. Millions of people are afraid of the past, the future, old age, insanity and death. Fear is a thought in you mind and you are afraid of your own thoughts.

A little boy can be paralyzed with fear when he is told there is a boogie man under his bed who is going to take him away. When his father turns on the light and shows him there is no boogie man, he is freed from fear. The fear in the mind of the boy was as real as if there really was a boogie man there. He was healed of a false thought in his mind. The thing he feared did not exist. Likewise, most of your fears have no reality. They are merely a conglomeration of sinister shadows, and shadows have no reality.

Do The Thing You Fear Ralph Waldo Emerson, philosopher and poet, said, “Do the thing you are afraid to do, and the death of fear is certain.” There was a time when the writer of this chapter was filled with unutterable fear when standing before an audience. The way I overcame it was to stand before the audience, do the thing I was afraid to do, and the death of fear was certain. When you affirm positively that you are going to master your fears, and you come to a definite decision in your conscious mind, you release the power of the subconscious which flows in response to the nature of your thought.

Banishing Stage Fright A young lady was invited to an audition. She had been looking forward to

Source page 154. the interview. However, on three previous occasions, she had failed miserably due to stage fright. She possessed a very good voice, but she was certain that when the time came for her to sing, she would be seized with state fright. The subconscious mind takes your fears as a request, proceeds to manifest them and then brings them into your experience. On three previous auditions she sang wrong notes, and she finally broke down and cried. The cause, as previously outlined, was an involuntary autosuggestion, i.e. a silent fear thought emotionalized and subjectified.

She overcame it by the following technique: Three times a day she isolated herself in a room. She sat down comfortably in an armchair, relaxed her body and closed her eyes. She stilled her mind and body to the best of her ability. Physical inertia favors passivity and renders the mind more receptive to suggestion. She counteracted the fear suggestion by saying to herself, “I sing beautifully, I am poised, serene, confident and calm.”

She repeated this statement slowly, quietly and with feeling from five to ten times at each sitting. She had three such “sittings” every day and one immediately prior to sleep. At the end of a week she was completely poised and confident, and gave an outstanding audition. Carry out the above procedure, and the death of fear is certain.

Fear Of Failure Occasionally young men from the local university come to see me, as well as school teachers, who often seem to suffer from suggestive amnesia at examinations. The complaint is always the same: “I know the answers after the examination is over, but I can't remember the answers during the examination.”

The idea which realizes itself, is the one to which we invariably give concentrated attention. I find that each one is obsessed with the idea of failure. Fear is behind the temporary amnesia, and it is the cause of the whole experience.

One young medical student was the most brilliant person in his class, yet he found himself failing to answer simple questions at the time of written or oral examinations. I explained to him that the reason was he had been worrying and was fearful for several days previous to the examination. These negative thoughts became charged with fear.

Thoughts enveloped in the powerful emotion of fear are realized in the subconscious mind. In other words, this young man was requesting his subconscious mind to see to it that he failed, and that is exactly what it did. On the day of the examination he found himself stricken with what is called, in psychological circles, suggestive amnesia.

How to Overcome Fear

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Joseph Murphy presents spiritual and self-help ideas, not medical, financial, or mental-health treatment. Treat claims about healing or outcomes as the author’s historical claims, not guarantees or professional advice.

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